Album review: Passenger, Young as the Morning, Old as the Sea

When it comes to songwriting, Passenger, known to his mum as Mike Rosenberg, is usually as quotable as an afternoon spent with the Gallagher Brothers, Bono and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The 32-year-old guitar-slinger knocks out killer couplets with the kind of regularity with which McDonald’s make burgers. With Young As The Morning... his eighth album since 2007, however, maybe the creative well is starting to run a little dry.

The Brighton native still knows his way around a melody and is capable of penning the kind of hummable hooks that hoover up your attention, but many of these songs seem to have foregone his trademark wry lyrics for a more Hallmark-esque sentiment, devoid of the cutting observations that elevated his lyrics above the pile.

Rosenberg made his name writing personal songs that resounded with the universal, but album opener ‘Everything’ seems to have the songwriter tying himself in existential knots, as he observes that “Nothing’s never something until you lose everything”.

The production, courtesy of Rosenberg himself alongside Chris Vallego (INXS, Empire of the Sun), is a little less subtle than before, with tracks like the inoffensive folk pop of ‘If You Go’ and the catchy but forgettable ‘Anywhere’ suffering from a little too much polish.

It has its moments. The bittersweet reminiscence of ‘When We Were Young’ is rather lovely, as our hero bemoans the speedy passing of the seasons. The title track features a galloping rhythm and a host of atmospheric crashes in the background, as he waxes wishfully about wanting to travel, namechecking ‘get away from it’ hotspots across the globe, from the west of Ireland to Norwegian lakes, Finnish forests and even squeezing in a visit to his Polish grandmother.

‘Beautiful Birds’ is a disarmingly beautiful love song, brimming over with avian metaphors, which features the honeyed tones of 20-year-old British songstress, Jasmine Lucilla Elizabeth Jennifer van den Bogaerde, aka Birdy. ‘The Long Road’ is either a lovely tribute to a friend, a would-be paramour or an honest look in the mirror, at someone who, “Found faith but you chose to doubt it/ You found love but you live without it/ now you don’t want to live without it”.

So, Young As The Morning... has plenty to recommend it. But songs like ‘Fool’s Gold’ and ‘Somebody’s Love’ feel like the kind of bittersweet also-rans that Passenger could pen before his cornflakes had gone soggy in the bowl. Rosenberg is capable of so much more.